Coronal Mass Ejections and Space Weather

Coronal Mass Ejections

A coronal mass ejection (CME) is an eruption of billions of tonnes of magnetically charged plasma from a star’s corona. The material ejected is sent into interplanetary space where it eventually dissipates. Should the material collide with a planet then that planet’s electro-magnetic field would be temporarily disrupted. If the Earth’s electro-magnetic field were disrupted by a large CME then p...

Composition of Coronal Mass Ejections

We analyze the physical origin of plasmas that are ejected from the solar corona. To address this issue, we perform a comprehensive analysis of the elemental composition of interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs) using recently released elemental composition data for Fe, Mg, Si, S, C, N, Ne, and He as compared to O and H. We find that ICMEs exhibit a systematic abundance increase of eleme...

Studying geoeffective interplanetary coronal mass ejections between the Sun and Earth: Space weather implications of Solar Mass Ejection Imager observations

[1] Interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs) are the primary cause of severe space weather at Earth because they drive shocks and trigger geomagnetic storms that can damage spacecraft and ground-based systems. The Solar Mass Ejection Imager (SMEI) is a U. S. Air Force experiment with the ability to track ICMEs in white light from near the Sun to Earth and beyond, thus providing an extended...

Initiation and propagation of coronal mass ejections

This paper reviews recent progress in the research on the initiation and propagation of CMEs. In the initiation part, several trigger mechanisms are discussed; In the propagation part, the observations and modelings of EIT waves/dimmings, as the EUV counterparts of CMEs, are described.

Coronal Waves, Shock Formation and Coronal Mass Ejections